When
it comes to drawing,
my philosophy is not to have any preconceived ideas of what to
draw. I begin by simply making random marks on a sheet of paper
like a two-year-old with crayons. Spontaneity is the key. In time
an image appears, just as one might see an animal or a face in
a cloud. Using a pencil and eraser, I bring the image forward,
untangling it from the scribble I began with.

Prior
to using this technique, the idea for a drawing always came first.
But the actual drawings were never as luminous as what I had envisioned.
By taking the idea out of the equation, I was able to liberate
myself from the confines of concept, and now I can explore a surreal
landscape where strange figures emerge out of the fog.

click on book

The
nine drawings collected here are
from the spring of 1996 when I was in an advanced life drawing
class in college, the last art class I took before switching my
major to creative writing. My professor, John Lincoln, was a master
of figure drawing and an intimidating presence in the classroom.
There were stories that he would rip students' drawings in front
of them, throw them out the window, toss their pencils across
the room. These rumors were the reason
I took his class, to witness this behavior firsthand, but as the
semester rolled on it became apparent that the rumors were just
that, or he simply toned down his teaching methods.

I'll
never forget my first critique in his class. All the students
had pinned up their drawings to the wall and Lincoln pointed at
mine. "Who did this?" he wanted to know. I raised my
hand. "Why didn't you finish drawing the hand?" "I
didn't have time," I said. He took his pencil and drew a
fat cartoon hand, the fingers ballooned, so it looked like the
model was wearing a baseball mitt. "Next time finish it,"
he said.